The center focuses on "global risk management", with specific emphasis on "a-typical" financial and economic risk that stems from exposure to uncertainty that cannot be appraised with standard methods of economic, accounting and financial analysis. In the Global economy, today, terrorist threats, abrupt shifts in volatility, spillover effect, governance weakness, as well as moral hazard and systemic risk require innovative approaches. Major regulatory and supervisory issues relevant to pension systems, financial risk hedging, and country risk lie at the heart of the Glob@l Finance Center's analysis and research work.

     The center aims at developing an "excellence center" in Glob@l Finance with the following services and activities:

Courses in corporate and market finance
Executive training
Applied and basic research
Conferences and workshops
Country risk reports
Risk assessment missions
Students internships
Students theses and project reports

Core Competences	Full-time faculty	Visiting&associates
Banking and Finance Risk management	Henri Aleman Tarek Amyuni Michel Henry Bouchet Bertrand Groslambert	Michael Payte
Corporate finance	Marc Michel Gérard Valin Rim Zaabar	Sundar Venkatesh
Global political economy	Ludovic DiBiaggio Gabriele Suder	Robert Isaak

Conferences and workshops

Collaboration with the finance sector consists of associating private and public organizations in conferences and workshops, and in inviting professionals to teach in seminars and courses. The Glob@l Finance Center gives special emphasis in associating companies in Sophia-Antipolis technology park as well as in Monaco and elsewhere (e.g. Trema for internships and conferences, FINCONET, HSBC and Crédit Foncier de Monaco for teaching in the MScIF and FMIT programs, Fauchier Partners for conferences…).
The conference cycle is attended by a wide public including students from Ceram and nearby schools and universities, professionals working in the Technology Park of Sophia Antipolis, and bankers and managers from the Nice and Monaco region.
 

Outreach to the business community: Total's Scholarship Program

As part of TOTAL's ongoing commitment to fostering development in host countries, TOTAL helps to train both students and managers in 15 emerging market countries. Created in 2003, the International Partnerships with Universities Department aims at training in France future decision-makers and maintaining close ties with them. TOTAL has selected a few partner academic institutions, including Ceram's Master of Science in International Finance, together with postgraduate programs at EDHEC, ENA and HEC, leading to internationally recognized Master's degrees.

I'm really grateful to TOTAL Group which has granted a scholarship for my MScIF degree! It gave me the chance to do my studies in International Finance at CERAM Sophia-Antipolis which has highly contributed in the expansion of my experience in the world of finance, thanks to the Glob@l Finance Center's conferences, debates, research and courses.

Mohammad Sadegh Shirazi, MScIF 2005-06

A wide range of employment opportunities

CERAM's students who are involved in market and corporate finance programs such as MScIF, FMIT and the Finance Major, currently work with the following companies, banks and financial institutions worldwide: Goldman Sachs, BNP, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Börse, Morgan Stanley, Italian Poste, etc...
 

Managing Database on Emerging Markets

The Glob@l Finance Center contains a "think tank" on Emerging Markets, that gradually builds up knowledge and intelligence on country risk and international finance issues. The center facilitates the faculty's and students' access to financial information resources in international banks, research centers and official institutions worldwide. It gathers data and circulates analyses on a number of selected countries, with specific emphasis on those emerging markets that do not have full market access. Currently, around 35 countries are available on the web-based database (roughly 50,000 page visits/year).
The country risk database is visited by a growing number of academic scholars and professionals who look for a standard presentation of the salient features of a country's risk, with regard to socio-political, macroeconomic, as well as financial parameters.
 

Global Distant Learning Network

As early as 1998, the Glob@l Finance Center has gradually developed distant learning tools by making available the academic programs in finance as well as the content of each Finance course in Finance, including research papers, publications, faculty curriculum vitae, and students' testimonies… on its website. This network is a powerful promotion tool to reach national and international students with regard to Ceram's finance academic programs.
 

Institutional partnership enhancement

The Glob@l Finance Center is active in enhancing institutional relations with academic partners, in particular with Westminster University in London, with ESAN in Lima, with AIT's School of Management in Bangkok, and with New York-based Pace University's Lubin School of Management. It currently explores the scope for partnership with Rotterdam-based Erasmus School of Management for an Executive MBA with a strong emphasis on financial risk management.